Drive. Drive and wait, a lot.
Or maybe it will take walking, riding a bike, taking the bus, train.
Or plane.
The peers and connections you and your child need to make might be VERY inconvenient and present a number of challenges.
Creative problem solving will help deal with time and resource conflicts. Enlist others to help get the youngster where they need to be.
Ask for help, accept help, appreciate help. I am so grateful to so many. Thank you!.
Finances can be an issue, I know.
Have your child help figure it out. Whether they find a way to help earn or raise funds,apply for financial aid, find grants or come up with other ways you never would have thought of to help solve the dilemma.
I had to stopping saying, “No, we can’t afford that.” and learn to think, “How can we make this work?”
I also had to learn: how to make good use of my time on the road and waiting, how to ask for help with rides, and how to get over my fears about Dale using public transportation and getting places on his own.
We live in a small rural town and homeschooling may have made driving a much bigger issue for us. I had a flexible schedule which helped a lot. It got crazier when I had to juggle Dale’s schedule, our exchange student’s Tim’s schedule and my mom’s doctor’s appointments along with other commitments. I could have made life better if I had complained and resisted less.
The benefits of the connection, learning and experience always outweighed the costs.
Examples:
Most of the Dale’s and Tim’s gatherings happened in 15 – 20 miles away from our home. Sometimes I dropped the boys off in the closest part of Davis,with their bikes. They each rode to their meetings, maybe had to wait at the library and then met up to ride part of the way back, together, to a point where I would pick them up. Sometimes they were able to take the very limited bus service one direction. They helped figure out schedules and options.
Dale loves to downhill ski, something I don’t get at all, and is not easy to do from our location. Dale’s dad carpooled with a skier who invited Dale to share in her group’s ski events. They had Dale contribute gas money and shovel snow to pay for this share of the housing. They had season passes and got discounts for Dale, but he usually paid for his pass. It was a hassle, and exhausting, but he loved skiing. I had to be willing to let him go.
We got savvy about airlines miles and watching for air fare sales early on because my relatives lived back east and I wanted Dale to have a relationship with them. We agreed to visit once a year. So we looked for travel deals, signed up for credit card offers with freebie flights, but always paid the card off. We were fine about Dale missing school if it would save us lots of money on a flight, or traveling at weird times. Airline miles “paid” for Dale’s trips to France as an exchange student, visits to colleges and scholarship competitions, and helped us travel for fun, learning and family visits.
Figuring out how Dale would get to San Francisco for his internship with Zinch was tricky. He asked a friends if he could stay one night so he could commute less. He found a ride share board an we met with a woman who was looking for someone to commute to BART with. Working around her schedule, and me dropping Dale a meeting poing was a compromise that saved money, let me still have the car, and allowed Dale to get to the city. Getting over my fears was the hard part.
Get started:
- Do you have any friends, relatives, buddies, any one in your community that you can share the transportation with? Ask!
- What public transportation do you have access to? Is your child old enough or savvy enough to use it independently and safely? Can you start using public transportation together so they can learn the skills they need?
- I love airline miles. I don’t know what the best offers are right now, but it is worth investigating.There are several websites devoted to this topic.
How have you solved transportations issues? I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments. Thanks, Lisa.